And there's a nice cardboard box available on Koningstraat...

So, I've known for a while that the housing situation in the Netherlands is very tight. It can takes months for someone to find a place, any place at all, of even minimal quality. And students can expect to pay €600+/month for a tiny room with all shared facilities. Both serious effort and luck are required to find a suitable place. It has crossed my mind more than once that our stay here in the Netherlands might come to a crashing halt this summer due to sudden homelessness.

And then you can of course also consider SQUATTING yourself. There's squatting information "officehours" (Kraak SpreekUur) for the different parts of Amsterdam several times a week. Keep in mind that no-one's gonna just give you a squat; you'll probably have to find some (one year officially unused) empty housing first. Sympathising people from the squatting movement will then help you squat the place:
Students in general: squat.net/studenten/ ; make an appointment via studenten@squat.net.

Apparently the Netherlands has such a housing crunch that people retain open properties for the speculation market. In order to counter this, the government has squatting laws — find a building unoccupied for one year, and you can claim it as your own.